The Lover From An Icy Sea Page 45

Chapter 76

  Kit decided to go on foot. The location of this club—if it was the same one he now had in mind—was only five or six blocks away. There’d probably be an entrance fee of some kind and it wouldn’t be trifling: the more exotic, he knew, the higher the price. He’d no doubt exceed his overdraft privileges and have to pay a penalty, but he needed an answer.

  He headed down Fifth Avenue and stopped at the first available ATM, from which he withdrew three hundred in crisp twenties, then stashed them in his pants. When he got to Thirteenth Street five minutes later, he turned right into longer blocks and numbered avenues. In a matter of fifteen minutes, two stark things met his gaze at a distance not diminished by twilight: the first was Daneka’s car; the second—and a block further west—the club, or at least a token of it: the club’s doorman. Kit looked to his right and thought he recognized Margarette’s apartment building, though there was little to distinguish one set of bricks from another in this part of the Village. He continued walking. As he approached Daneka’s car, he noticed Ron in the front seat with head bowed—either snoozing or reading, Kit thought. In any case, if Ron had seen and recognized Kit at a distance, he was now choosing not to acknowledge him.

  The doorman came into sharper focus as Kit left the vehicle behind. He realized it was parked—perhaps strategically? he wondered—halfway between the club and what he believed to be Margarette’s building.

  He looked more closely at the doorman, who sported a scowl, two-day-old growth, and a long coat, the color of bishop’s purple. How appropriate, Kit thought. He also noted the coat was badly in need of a clean, especially from the waist down. He was a bull of a man—a bull who apparently spent too much time in the mud—or whatever it was that besmeared and bespattered his overcoat.

  Kit glanced past the man to the front door and saw the brass plate Evon had spoken of—polished to a high gloss, with letters in black bas-relief. He saw the name “Nate,” but it was keeping some awkward company, the meaning of which Kit couldn’t even begin to decipher. It was either gibberish or Gaellic—Kit didn’t know which. But if Gaellic, he thought, maybe Nate was related in some way to Michael Kelly. Hell, maybe even this doorman was related to Michael Kelly—and of the same Irish stock gone raffishly to seed.

  He decided to try to bluff his way in and reached for a shiny brass door handle.

  “And just where the fuck do you think you’re going, clown?”

  “In,” Kit answered.

  “Not here you’re not. This club’s private. No kids allowed—unless they’ve got the right credentials.”

  “And what might those be?” Kit’s question elicited a smirk from the doorman that made ‘evil’ sound like a nice word.

  “Tits and ass for starters. A good pair of lips for finishers.”

  “And if I can’t offer either?”

  “Then you’re shit outta luck. ‘Cause I don’t care dick about dick.”

  “Well, then, maybe you could just help me out with a little information,” Kit said, reaching into his pants pocket. “You see, I’m trying to find my mother. I think she may be in there—walking the dog, so to speak.”

  Kit noticed the doorman reach inside his own coat at the same instant. The doorman withdrew his hand again only after he’d seen what Kit was reaching for. A low rumble greeted Kit’s ears, and he wasn’t sure whether the source of it was the subway or the doorman.

  “Your mama got a pussy? Or are you it?” he asked.

  “My mother finishes off fuckers like you just for kicks,” Kit answered.

  “That so?” the doorman sniffed. “Could be. We get a couple of elderly ladies here from time to time. The price of admission? If they come alone—as they usually do—they gotta eat me first. I’m tellin’ ya—even young pussy can’t compete with an older lady’s lips—especially when she’s desperate to get through that door. The older ones know how to suck like shop floor vacuum cleaners.”

  Whatever thoughts Kit might’ve once had about doormen on the Upper East Side, he realized there was a whole species at an evolutionary level far below them—and that he’d just met one exemplary specimen.

  “Well, you see, my mother’s still got all her front teeth, so I doubt she’s had the pleasure.”

  “Oh. Still got her teeth, has she? Well, then, she’d most likely not be on the inside. ‘Cause by the time I’m finished, all they got left is their molars.”

  Kit saw his opening. “‘Mind, then, if I just take a peek?

  “Gotta become a member first.”

  “How much are we talking?”

  “A hunderd.” Kit counted out five twenties and handed them over. He then reached again for the door handle. “Hold on there, kid. Not so fast. Membership may have its privileges, but who said one of ‘em gets you through the door?”

  “What are you talking about? I just paid you for that privilege.”

  “No, not really. You just paid the annual dues, so now you’re a member. But there’s still the matter of a cover charge to open that door and get a peek.”

  “And how much would the cover charge be?” Kit spat out.

  “If you wanna get nasty, maybe you can’t afford it. You wanna be nice? I may be willing to discuss price.”

  “And how much, sir, might the cover charge be?” Kit asked mock-politely.

  “Much better. Cover charge is another hunderd.”

  Kit counted out five additional twenties and handed them over. As he then grasped the door handle and was about to open the door, he wondered for an instant what sort of childhood could produce an animal like this one.

  “Peek only, ‘remember?” the doorman said.

  “What the fuck are you talking about? I just paid you a hundred for membership and a hundred to enter.”

  “Oh, no,” the doorman laughed. “You paid to peek. You wanna go inside? You gotta have a ticket.”

  Kit was finding it increasingly difficult to keep his rage under control. “So where do I purchase a ticket?”

  “You don’t purchase. You bring.”

  “Huh?”

  “A ticket’s a little lady. A chick. A pussy. No guy gets inside without one. Club rules. Strictly enforced.”

  “You might’ve told me that right up front, fucker. It’s clear I didn’t come here with a date.”

  They stood at an impasse—until, that is, serendipity waved to Kit from a distance. He looked over the doorman’s shoulder and saw Evon walking up the street in their direction. She wasn’t carrying groceries or even a purse to pay for them. He waited in silence until she arrived. She assessed the situation in an instant, then spoke directly to the doorman.

  “I’m his ticket,” she said before giving Kit a kiss on the cheek. She then opened the door and walked in, letting the door close behind her. The doorman looked on as she glided right on through and out of sight, then looked back at Kit.

  “Your lucky fucky day, kid.”

  “Yeah. Like you say—my ‘lucky fucky day.’” Kit was about to reach again for the door handle when the man leaned down and stopped him with an outstretched paw.

  “What’s your name, kid?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Just trying to be helpful is all. Just trying to give you some ‘inside’ before you get inside.”

  “Name’s Kit.”

  “Well then, if you wanna remain—as they say here—‘nonymous, you tell ‘em ‘Kit’ on the inside and they’ll turn it around to ‘Tik.’ You want folks to call you by your real name, you tell ‘em on the inside your name’s ‘Tik.’ They’ll turn it around to ‘Kit.’ Your choice.” And then he stood back up and smirked again before delivering some of his own sorry wit. “Tick,” he said. “Blood-sucking tick. Go suck some, sucker.”

  Kit turned away, grasped the door handle, then glanced once more at the brass plate next to it and read “Enola niaga ecno s’nate.” Sure enough. Either gibberish or Gaellic.

  * * *

  Kit all but reeled back on his heels at the assault on his
ears. The place was so dark and clinical-smelling, hearing was the only sense he could make immediate use of. The music sounded otherworldly—hideous if not downright hellish. As his pupils adjusted to the darkness, he stepped forward. Something or someone—he couldn’t see anything, but now, at least, he could feel—shoved something into his gut. A second something or someone screamed into his ear: “Take your clothes off and put them in the basket.”

  He hesitated, but a hand he could now make out directly in front of his eyes snapped its fingers. The fingernails, Kit noted, were long and painted day-glo-pink. The finger-snapping was not in syncopation to the music, but was rather a clear command for action—an order to strip, fast and final. Kit hadn’t just spent two hundred dollars to stop now. What he wanted to know was somewhere up there in front of him—he could see the shimmer of strobe lights from around a bend—and if he had to strip to get to it, so be it.

  He took his clothes off and dropped them into the basket, then handed the basket back. He was ready to move on, but the hand stopped him, reached down and began to masturbate him. However distasteful the whole scenario may’ve been to him, the hand knew what it was doing—and it wasn’t long before it had achieved its objective. A second hand, nails this time painted in purple, approached his penis with something that looked like a cock ring with a number attached to it. So this is how they match clothes with customers, he thought.. How really perfectly nifty. As both hands worked to get the cock ring in place, Kit wondered how they handled the women—then decided he’d rather not think about it. The hand signaled to him that it was finished.

  Now barefoot, he could feel the floor. It was warm and clammy, as was the air. A few steps further on, a new voice assaulted his ear. “What’s your name?”

  He opted for anonymity. “Kit.” And then he spelled it so there’d be no misunderstanding. “K—I—T.” He felt yet a another hand slide between his legs to verify gender. Another came up to his chest with an artist’s paintbrush and day-glo paint—blue. How nifty. Blue for boys. No doubt, pink for girls. He watched as the hand holding the paintbrush wrote out “Tik,” then spun him around and wrote the same—he assumed—on his back. He wondered whether he’d shortly see “Akenad” scribbled across a pair of too familiar breasts—or whether she’d be in the driver’s seat and he’d consequently see the same scribbled across an otherwise anonymous back.

  The hand finished and waved him on.

  In the meantime, his eyes had adjusted entirely to the darkness. As he walked slowly down a long corridor, he could just barely make out a black velvet curtain hanging at the end. The strobe effects were almost completely swallowed up by the heavy black material, but there was a crack where the two halves of the curtain met, and Kit could see through it. The light on the other side was as blindingly bright as the music was deafeningly loud. Both were repulsively repetitive.

  When he finally opened the curtain and stepped through, sight, sound, smell and feel all combined to produce a taste in his mouth like metal. He had, he realized, bitten his own tongue, and the result was the onset of nausea.

  He saw bodies everywhere, writhing like snakes at the bottom of a too-small pit. The strobe made their movements appear spastic, made what might be smiles appear to be sneers. It was Dante and Bosch both in one small enclosure. His feet felt as if they were standing in pools of warm pus.

  At the head of the room was a raised stage. Through the strobes, he could just barely make out the bodies of one—or maybe two—women, and several men. The men were converging on the woman—and yes, there were two women, but Kit could see that the second was also converging on the first—seemingly from all directions. Their motions were too furious for Kit to make out names, although all chests and breasts clearly sparkled with the day-glo of identification. He tried to focus on the pink lettering, but breasts and backs were moving too fast for him to get a fix. He tried, instead, to focus on faces—but with no greater success.

  He thought he saw—but maybe only imagined—the face of a young girl with green scales painted around her eyes, a mermaid’s scales; he then thought he saw in the same figure—but maybe only imagined—an older woman, with weary intelligence instead of scales etched into rather than around her eyes; he finally thought he saw—but maybe only imagined—an old hag, a witch—in the very same woman. And then he knew he was merely hallucinating—because all of the men resembled Neptune or Poseidon—less the trident.

  He approached the stage stepping over bodies on the floor in front of him, up against columns to either side of him, hanging from cages overhead. He tried again to focus on the woman, but she was in the throes of something hideous and menacing. He saw what he suspected was a name painted across her back and tried to focus on some of the letters before another body blocked his view.

  The volume and the tempo of the music abruptly increased. The woman looked out from the stage with a leer for an appreciative public. He thought he recognized the face, for an instant, but then his brain—or maybe just his imagination—went into shock and blocked out the vision. He turned away and walked back towards the entrance with little or no regard for the flesh he was trampling, possibly bruising. That same flesh apparently had as little regard for being trampled and bruised.

  As he parted the curtain, he removed the cock-ring with its basket number and looked for a pair of hands in the dark—pink and purple day-glo-painted fingernails—to offer the ring to, found a pair and promptly exchanged it for a basket. Without pausing to get dressed, he walked to the front door and exited. It was nighttime, and the street was empty except for parked cars—several of them limos—and a doorman dressed in a bishop’s purple overcoat. The last sound he heard as he ducked into an alley to put his clothes back on was the rumble of a man’s laugh—echoed by the rumble of the subway beneath his feet.

  He dressed quickly, then headed out in the direction of home—a million thankful miles away.

  Chapter 77

  Kit resolved to wait her out—to wait, if necessary, until hell froze over. The weeks passed, but he heard nothing. And so, he concentrated on his work—and assumed she was doing the same. He really didn’t want to think about what she might be doing when she was doing something other than concentrating.

  As frequently happens when the mind and body are at odds over a course of action, one or the other has to pay the consequences. In Kit’s case, it was his body.

  He had little appetite and began to lose weight precipitously. He slept badly, if at all—and so, his eyes began to resemble black holes. Most conspicuously to himself—but also to others around him—the stress of not knowing, of not understanding, and of not being able to find resolution to his incomprehension began to show itself in his hands. He thought at first it was just the change of seasons. Fall had arrived in New York—and with it, the colder, drier weather.

  He looked down at his hands and felt like an old man. No matter what he put on them—or how much—they would dry up within seconds. He could literally watch the lotions disappear into the pores. He might go through an entire jar of petroleum jelly in a day. It didn’t matter. Fissures opened up between his fingers, then in his palms, and they might start at any moment to bleed. He took to wearing beauty gloves at work so as to hide the state of his hands from the models—also to keep the blood off the camera equipment. Whenever the blood began to seep through, he’d put on a second pair of gloves over the first.

  His clothes became ill-fitting, but he could easily hide what lay beneath. It was at times almost impossible to keep his eyes open; at others, impossible to close them. Still, the worst of it—because the most visible at least to him—was in his hands.

  Almost three months had passed since he’d last seen her, since he’d really come to understand what she’d meant by ‘Scandinavian silence.’ The condition of his hands had deteriorated accordingly—as if they, in their sorry state, could somehow communicate his loneliness. If not to him, because he simply wouldn’t acknowledge it, then somehow to her, in the form of
a silent prayer she’d finally understand. Kit was now at the point where he preferred to call in sick rather than show up on a set, only to have people gawk at him, too embarrassed to ask either about the gloves or about the clear evidence of something terribly wrong inside of them.

  Today was Friday. Thanksgiving was less than a week away, and he’d be spending it in Radnor with his parents. They would, of course, ask about her—and he, of course, would tell them. At the same time, they’d see and ask about his hands—and he’d have to explain that, too. As he walked in circles from bed to kitchen and back again—he hadn’t been to work the entire week—he realized the afternoon was fading into twilight. In just the same way, he knew that Friday would fade into Saturday, then Saturday into Sunday, then on and on without differentiation. Each day would be equal to the other, and each would be equally meaningless.

  He had to act.

  He left his apartment and walked to the subway station, then descended to platform level and took the Number Six uptown. He could’ve changed over to the Express at Forty-second Street, but he was in no particular rush. The important thing was that he was finally doing something.

  When his train arrived at Ninety-sixth Street, he got out, ascended to street-level and walked west into a setting sun. The air was more brisk than normal, even for that time of year, and the wind kicked up acorns and leaves that street-cleaners had not yet removed. Looking into the distance and out beyond Park, Madison and Fifth Avenues into Central Park, he noticed the Maples had all put on their various costumes of fall foliage. The palmatums from Japan, China and Korea, in particular, were a wash of reds—from salmon and carmine to crimson, claret and fire; of yellows—from amber and straw to Paris and yellow madder; of purples—damson and dahlia, raisin, solferino and wine; and of oranges—from carnelian and carotene to burnt sienna and ochre. The more native saccharums and saccharinums were equally brilliant in their variegation, if somewhat less refined in the structure of their lobes and leaves.